THE OREGON SUNDAY ' JOURNAL PORTLAND. ' SUNDAY EOSNa FEBRUARY ' 2 V J905
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Tlie Ballet as
StoulJ Be Again
Gr.o.wing in Favor
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AMERICA this season appears to be
I on the eve of a revival of the most
graceful of the arts dancing.
That most picturesque phase of danc
ing, the pure form of the ballet not the
frenzied capers of the comic opera chorus
bearing the name is receiving more at
tention in the United States this year than
it has since the days of Fannie Elssler,vchen
cities Vient xvild over one woman's supple
swaying. Adeline Genee, with others who
have leaped suddenly into a whirl of pop-
' ular interest and admiration, holds the cen-
. ter of the stage as a novelty with the mod
ern exposition of an art as old as the human
:X.race.
In Europe, Topsy Sinden, Genee s suc
cessor in the London Empire ballet, evokes
salvos of applause that bear witness more
to the enthusiasm for the art of the ballet
itself than for the dancing of the premiere.
In Paris and other great cities of the Con
tinent, ballerine are flashing suddenly into
fame and demonstrating that the revival is
world wide, as though some beautiful
creature of the senses and the mind, having
slept for half a century, were awakened by.
a swift enchantment, to rejoice men's eyes
anew.
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WE LOVE dancing, althpugh w haye
not really danced, as the highest form
of the art is expressed, for, lo ! these
many years.
Every little while some elegant causeur finds
material for half a dozen pages of tender sad
ness in deploring the dulness of the New Eng
land village, now that the big ballrooms of the
countryside inns are closed and the joyous, jovial
.rout of dancers has passed as a feature of the
national life the fashionable cotillon not being
considered as expressing in its true form the
poetry of motion.
The dirges, however, are not entirely true.
, .While the most graceful art has been permitted
to languish, a love for it has remained, and the
taerry revels of former years have not been lost
eight of entirely because of the fashionable mod
ernization of dancing. One need only go to the
clubs and the socials of any American city to see
how well the masses of the people love dancing.
The antique stock joke about the summer hotel
full of girls pining- for a waltz with an Adam
. who is absent from their Eden is taken out and
dusted off and furbished up season after season,
i'ust because of the love of dancing in American
learts.
And, too, because dancing is one .of the most
primitive forms of expression known to human
ity. The need for it is as imperative as the in
stinctive need for song, almost as essential as
the need for speech.
When, a number of years ago, the negroes,
responding to that inner impulse, which was felt
more strongly by them than by their super-refined
neighbors, evolved the cakewalk and carried it
to the heights of grotesque posturing and ex
travagant antic, the comic humor of it fasci
nated the Aiierican sense of the funny.
But the universal popularity of the cake
walk was far from being due to the national love
f humor. The art of the dance, appreciably
neglected, needed only that fresh excuse for re
nascence; boys and girls, men and women seized
upon it with an avidity whoiry natural, wholly
instinctive.
: We always swing to extremes.'
the anta8tic cakewalk yesterday; it
is the formal, almost classic ballet today. And
ci all dancing, m the wonderfully wide range of
the entrancing art, none is more studiously
scientific, more impressively picturesque, than
8kt,U i Pe danseuse
. ,,Th? ta8 entered in the effulgence of its
brilliant hght, serves now as the cynosure of the
pubho gaze; but the background of; every Wa
city in the land is filled with votaries quite as
sincere, and quite as appreciative of the pleas
ure of tho dancrf, as any ballet leader who ever
pirouetted on two toes.
lor the present, end , for a long time to
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miration and the critical faculty which we, in
oux time, taust sedulously cultivaU if we would
be worthy of our half -forgotten inheritance of
appreciation and if we would: be qualified to
rival the audiences who are happy in sitting
in judgment on her abroad.
Or a Valentine Petit, auburn haired, warm
lipped and alluring of eye, may come to us in
all the splendid modeling of her ivory snns and
shoulders, wearing the brilliant habiliment of
the butterfly, the rainbow tints flashing from
stage to stage, as though Nature, in
some exuberantly generous mooa, naa
vouchsafed to mankind a gigantic, daz
zling species of lepidoptera to fssci
nate the eye and sate the spirit with an
incarnation di the adorable myth of
Psyche.
Queens of the ballet today,
in the light of this unforeseen
development of interest in their
art, are as many, as beautiful
and, perhaps, as skilful as those
of the past, for, where an art
loses in one aspect with the
flight of time, it usually gains
in another. The grace and pic
turesqueness of . Trauhanova,
Chasles, Mariiuita, Eosa Mori
and Z a m belli
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now bid fair to
rival the preci
sion and finish
o f Cerito, L a
Guimard, D e s
Mastins, La Ca
margo, Salle,
Kosati and Car
lotta GrisL
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come, we are sealed ar.d delivered over to admi
ration of la Genee, the beautiful blond Dane,'
whose professional ethics hark back to the best
traditions of her art, where the dancer, is also
the mime and aims to give every posture, every
movement, every figure that she executes a
meaning which the spectators can interpret in
tellectually, while their grace, their lightness,
their picturesqueness constitute so many visual
delights.
Our grandfathers rejoiced in similar alle-.
giance to the deities of the dance. La Fontaine
created ballet dancing in France in the days
and the nights of Louis XIV. Her reward was
the hand, the fortune and the title of the mar
quis de Saint-Genies.
Another famous ballerina of the seventeenth
century was the famous Florence, whose son be
came archbishop of Oambrai.
The name of Taglioni, who made of ballet
dancing the art as it is known today, is still one
to conjure with; in their old age, men whose
memory of their youth preserved the vision of
Taglioni in her glory were sure of audiences
rapt in marvel of the tale, as though they were
the surviving witnesses of a miracle that had
come to pass.
Fannie Elssler, who made new traditions in
her art and informed her dancing with a' qual
ity of passion which achieved the impossible
a wedding of the brilliant but cold ballet to the
seductive, swaying charm of the ancient dances
of Artemis, in Greece is almost a treasure-of ..
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before it in the way of forming acquaintance
with all the interesting and romantio stages
attending the development of a school, of art
still foreign to our experience.
To Americans, ballet dancing is an accom
plishment which any girl of aptitude expects to
"pick up" at an age even as late as 20 years.
In Europe it is a profession which is studied
at old and highly organized schools by candi
dates who begin with the beginning of their teens.
Yet our dancers are born to all the best
endowments of every nation whose beauties
have trod the boards. The physical health of
the English dancer is theirs, as are the clever
ness of the French, the smooth grace of the
Italian, tho fire of the Spanish and the sen
suous elegance of the Austrian.
Only the wealth and the seal of fashion
able indorsement, that have made grand opera
in America a thing against which all Europe
burns with consuming jealousy, are needed to
enable us to surpass the Old World.
But it is not the rich or the well-to-do
only who are the probable contributors to the
revival. The interest in dancing is pre-eminently
the affair of the whole people, if one
universal evidence can be relied upon. It is
that one which has long been roost obvious
and, therefore, most generally overlooked.
Those who are men and women now can
recall the scene when the organ-grinder or the
German band came into their street twenty
years ago. And they can recall, as well, the
awkward hip-hopping they and their playmates
did to the alluring airs, in the fond imagina
tion of a dance.
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modern times, for all that she passed from
the stage she adorned so many years ago. A
Prussian banker won her. while her-sister,
Theresa, married the brother of the- Prussian
king.
If the revival come, if the story of ' our
grandfathers is repeated in this generation as
it has been repeated in eyejy generatiqn since
tho birth among primitive men of the undying
art of the dance, the ballet in all its magnifi
cent scope may be revivified, with phase upon ,
phase wafted across the seas in all the beauty
in which they are "still enjoyed by peoples who
maintain schools fop the art's , perpetuation.'
A ChasleSj unfailingly elegant in pose, in
imitably graceful in whatever drapery sho as
sumes,, will bring us the fruits of her long ap
nrenticeahiD. A. Trauhanova will challenge ad-
'TUT
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In every art what is most needed to carry
it to its highest level is the encouragement of
patronage. To every other art America has
extended the helping nand in a manner muni
ficent rather than merely generous. If it be
the turn of the ballet now, the whole world
will share in the benefits.
.'. And it seems, assuredly, that those who
have the .jieans to become patrons of the bal
let, , in- the practical fashion of American audiences,-who
pay full prices .for their atnuse
ments, are prepared to do their full part.
This country, if the .ballet divertissement
should ever become an institution as national
as grand opera is, has some delightful years
How different today I, The first strain ox
music ''east side, west side, all around tho
town" hales forth a troupe of tiny coryphee
whose every step and turn is the poetry of mo
tion. The whole childish world of America
seems, suddenly to have been born "to an inheri
tance of the most graceful art, while in. the
public schools of New York the pupils are al
ready expert in the dances of various nations.
Here-and there, in schoolhouso and on
Stage, among the young and tho mature, the
human need for tho oldest and the most beau
tiful of the arts is finding a national expres
sion. Shall we revive it, fully nowlv